Mrs. V., Age 88, Tells Of The Day She Was Raped

Videotape Assures Her Day In Court

Videotaping Elderly Rape Victim Assures Day In Court

December 31, 1992|By LYNNE TUOHY; Courant Staff Writer

She is 88 and looked every year of it as she trembled through her testimony on the witness stand Wednesday, talking about the evening seven months ago when a man forced his way into her apartment and raped her.

As she recounted the terror and degradation of the rape, she also encountered her own mortality. She was testifying not at the criminal trial of her alleged attacker, but during an unusual proceeding at Hartford Superior Court. Its sole purpose was to preserve her testimony on videotape, for use at a trial that may not take place for another year.

FOR THE RECORD - Videotaped testimony was crucial to the murder conviction of Norberto Rivera for the 1988 slaying of a Hartford man,. The murder case was incorrectly idenified Thursday in a Page One story about the videotaping.

She is 88 and may not live to see justice done.

She was dubbed "Mrs. V" because the names of rape victims are not a matter of public record. Little of her frail frame showed above the witness box. She explained that she used to be bigger, all of 5 foot 2, but the night of April 5 has taken its toll.

"I've lost weight. I don't have an appetite. I don't sleep well anymore," the New Britain woman said, almost apologetically. "I haven't been the same since."

She has round spectacles and a face like an apple doll -- shrunken, angular and wrinkled. She seemed oblivious to the video camera, mounted on a large, black tripod in the back of the courtroom.

Hers is not the story of violence on the mean streets, but of how that violence snuck through two secured doors to visit an old lady who really believed there was a delivery for her. Sometimes she did get packages, she testified. She has been a widow for 22 years, but has a son and other family members in the area.

So when her apartment buzzer sounded at about 6:30 p.m., and

the voice on the intercom said there was a package for her, she pushed the buzzer that opened the outside security door. Soon a knock came at her door. Because she recently had hurt her foot, Mrs. V couldn't stand on tiptoe to look through the peephole.

"I opened the door a little. Not that much. Then he dangled this group of keys in my face. He said, `You forgot your keys.' "

But Mrs. V had her keys, or else how could she have gotten into her apartment in the first place, she told the smattering of court personnel gathered in the small courtroom. The way she said it made it clear that she thought this particular ruse was an insult to her intelligence. But it was only the first in a series of insults, and injuries.

"He pushed me in, knocked me down and dragged me to the living room and dropped me on the living room floor," she said.

The man kept asking her where she kept her money. She kept telling him she had no money and pleaded with him not to hurt her, she said. They repeated those same lines several times, until she finally admitted she had several dollars put aside in a bureau drawer to pay for the newspaper.

"He dragged me in the bedroom. That's when my glasses fell off. I asked him to pick them up. He did and laid them on the chair. I took the dollar bills I had, six or seven or eight of them, and gave them to him because I was afraid. Then he told me to get on the bed. I told him no, I don't want to get on the bed. He nudged me. He sort of pushed me.

"I just kept begging him to leave me alone. He kept saying if I didn't keep quiet, he would hurt me."

He made her take off her clothes; he took off his. He sexually assaulted her twice. She told of his actions in short sentences and clinical terms, as Herbert Carlson, supervisory assistant state's attorney, led her through the assault question by question.

"He hurt me very much," she concluded.

She remained composed during most of her testimony, until she got to the point where the physical assault was over and her attacker was getting dressed. But he would not allow her to get dressed. For Mrs. V, that was the final indignity.

"I tried to grab my clothes, but he wouldn't let me," she said, her voice quavering. "I felt so dirty. I felt so filthy. I wanted to put on my clothes, but he wouldn't let me."

The woman who at first had quarreled with the man who pushed his way into her apartment, trying to guard her newspaper money, now told her attacker that she had rent money put aside.

"It was one whole $100 bill and one whole $50 bill," she testified. "I took it and gave it to him because I was afraid of him." Then he left.

She said she covered herself and phoned her son, who rushed over and called the police. The police took her to the emergency room, where examinations, treatment and evidence gathering followed.

A 47-yearold Hartford man, Leo Hendricks, has been charged with first-degree sexual assault and other felonies in the case. Mrs. V testified she never saw her attacker's face, heeding his warnings not to look at him. But she testified that she recognized his clothing as that of a man who had held a door for her in the lobby only hours earlier and had watched her remove her mail.

Public Defender Fred DeCaprio questioned Mrs. V briefly about her inability to spot a picture of her attacker in the books of mug shots shown her by the New Britain police. "I never took a look at